Category / Smith

by Andrew Pilcher

Number nine

smith-pilcher-1001-160831

Number nine? It’s 1001 in binary.

This strip was inspired by this couple of buildings in Manchester.

embankment7-1606

In my day job I put together a magazine and website called New Steel Construction, and in our June edition we did a feature on the buildings, which were part of a redevelopment called The Embankment (click here to read more about it if steel-framed buildings are things that really float your boat).  I liked the numbers that had been put on the top of them, and the fact that they looked like the binary I and 0 that appear on on/off switches. So, as well as being read as 100 and 101 they could be read as 4 and 5. The fact that strip 1000 showed Jones being aware that she is in a comic strip melded with the binary, and we ended up with a series of strips where Jones thought she was in the Matrix.

The colour scheme changes after the last panel of this strip, to reflect the eerie green grading that was used in the Matrix movies. The grainy green background remains until Jones snaps out of it five strips later.

matrix

by Andrew Pilcher

1000!

smith-pilcher-1000-160829

As ever, I’m desperately trying to catch up on the blog, having put all my energy into keeping the GoComics site where all these strips get premiered up-to-date. It’s late November 2016 as I write this, so I have three packed months to catch up on. In that time I’ve played FDR in Annie at the White Rock Theatre in Hastings (a lot of the following strips will have been drawn during rehearsals or between entrances during the show), made a whistlestop trip to the States to attend my Mother Law’s funeral, and attended the death throes of American democracy. I would have updated the blog while I was in the States, if only I could remember the password for WordPress! So here I am doing it now.

It’s strip number 1000! I thought I’d go all meta for a bit…

 

by Andrew Pilcher

Nine nine nine

smith-pilcher-999-160826

And this one is a lot of story threads being joined together and becoming something else entirely. Obviously this is a left over from the Olympics, but it was also going to be used to herald a big change to the strip as well, which has now been postponed until after the millennial celebrations of Strip 1,000 on Monday.

Don’t worry, it’s not a big fundamental change like what has been happening to Girth over the past few weeks. Instead I’ll be making a popular occasional character a regular, something I’ve been working up to for a couple of years now…

All will be revelaed in a couple of weeks’ time…

by Andrew Pilcher

Peek at you

smith-pilcher-998-160824

This week is very much made up of left over gags from other weeks, being used as filler while the counter in the corner of the top right frame ticks its way up to the big 1,000. So here’s a gag from the long grass series that was too good to waste. Originally a kangaroo was going to appear in the penultimate panel, but in between the writing and the drawing of this strip, Pokemon Go took off, so I replaced the Roo with a Pikachu, and the gag became about ten times better.

by Andrew Pilcher

Scone

smith-pilcher-997-160822

The eternal question: how do you pronounce ‘scone’. Some say it should be pronounced as it is spelled: ‘scone’. Others think ‘sconn’ is correct. Personally, I don’t mind either, so long as it’s covered in lots of clotted cream and strawberry jam.

Thanks to Daisy Estall, who posed this question on her facebook feed. The consensus was that it should be ‘scone’. To rhyme with ‘scone’.

by Andrew Pilcher

Hammer toss

smith-pilcher-996-160819

by Andrew Pilcher

Lawn Tennis

smith-pilcher-995-160817

rx118

That’s one of our Hastings fishing boats in the final panel. The real boat is pictured to the right. Photo by Tony Bates. Buy a canvas print here.

by Andrew Pilcher

100m dash

smith-pilcher-994-160815

I had an accident with a bottle of Dr Pepper and a graphics tablet on the Sunday I drew this. It completely fritzed my graphics tablet and left me with no means to colour the strip so this black and white version had to be posted instead.

90e5d7dffe673f73c23a526f11abb26f

It ended up looking a lot better than I expected, but Jones and Smudge look undentical unless they’re coloured, so I don’t think I’ll ever be reverting to black and white, no matter how much time it may save.

I thought this was going to be a fairly standard joke about Scrumpy’s ears, so I wasn’t ready for the response it got. It appears that on the same day this was published, Shaunae Miller of the Bahamas beat Allyson Felix of the USA in the 400m track event in the most unusual fashion – she dived over the line. If the winner of the race is the first person to get a bodypart over the line, both Scrumpy and Shaunae won fair and square. In my opinion it’s just as valid as dipping at the line, and everyone does that.

 

by Andrew Pilcher

Swimming

smith-pilcher-993-160812

Yes, the butterfly is a Monarch – or as I thought when I found a reference photo on Google Images, a generic red butterfly. It turns out that it’s been blown a good 3,000 miles off course.  I should have gone for one of these instead, a Red Admiral.

I was sorely tempted to colour the water in the pool an opaque green colour, to match the diving pool in Rio, but in the end I stuck to the more typical livid turquoise. Look at that pool. Are you supposed to dive in it or play hockey on it?

by Andrew Pilcher

Fencing

smith-pilcher-992-160810

As they say on the game show Catchphrase, say what you see.